What is the difference between an filament bulb and an LED?

Filament vs. traditional LED While it’s impossible to say for certain what the best bulb choice is for you as not everyone is going to use their lights for the same thing, there are some clear pros and cons for each of these bulbs that might help you make the decision.

LED

Short for “light emitting diodes”, LEDs are becoming the most likely successor to the lighting world throne. Where incandescent bulbs fell short in terms of lifelong hours, offering an average of 1,000 hours of light, LEDs have overtaken them with an amazing 50,000 hours.

Don’t be scared off by the term semiconductor,  though! While it may sound a bit technical, a semiconductor is basically any material that partially conducts electricity, meaning there are positive and negative charges along the material. And when electricity is sent through such a material, certain areas switch back and forth between a positive and negative charge. This jumping back and forth between charges is what creates the light you see in LEDs.

The longevity of LEDs is due in part to its unique characteristic of being a type of solid-state lighting. In other words, while incandescent bulbs rely on the light produced by heating a filament and fluorescent lights excite the molecules of gas in order to illuminate, LEDs create light by passing an electrical current through a semiconductor.

The entire process is much more energy efficient than heating a filament like traditional incandescent bulbs. In fact, most incandescents only use 10% of the required energy for light. The other 90% is given off in the form of heat. So a bulb that can cut back on any amount of this kind of loss, like an LED does, is going to have a longer life in general.

Filament LED.

Now that you know just what an LED is doing when it is producing light, we can get down to what makes a filament LED so different from your average LED. With the design of traditional incandescent bulbs in mind, filament LEDs have a pretty neat retro look about them. Instead of a container made only partially of glass like other LEDs, the enclosures of filament LEDs are made entirely of glass, just like old-fashioned Incandescents. Inside, very small LEDs are placed along a glass or sapphire cylinder, the appearance of which mimics a filament.

The main difference between filament LEDs and regular LEDs is in the placement and number of individual LEDs in each bulb. While regular LEDs might use one large LED or a group of LEDs packed tightly into a small space, filament LEDs spread the diodes along several different lines or “filaments”. this arrangement also means smaller heat sinks (mechanisms to take heat away from the diodes) are needed.

Generally, Filament LEDs have several “filaments” in them as just one would not be enough to produce a usable amount of light. As a result, many bulbs will have over four different strands of LEDs inside, giving the look of an antique Edison-style bulb.

The result of these differences is that where traditional LEDs only have a 180 degree light angle as discussed above, filament LEDs have the same range as incandescent bulbs, meaning they can light up all the corners of a room better than a normal LED.